EX-INMATE AWARDED $500,000 BY JURORS

A federal jury in Fort Lauderdale awarded $500,000 to a woman whose life-threatening tubal pregnancy was misdiagnosed as constipation and venereal disease while she was serving a 60-day sentence in the Broward County Jail.

The eight-member jury deliberated about two hours, returning the verdict late Thursday before U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra. Jurors awarded Charleen Foree $300,000 for physical and emotional suffering, $100,000 for the loss of internal reproductive organs, and $100,000 for future medical expenses.

Foree cried with relief. "Finally, someone recognized what a problem this is," she said Friday during an interview in her lawyer's office. "I was sentenced to 60 days in jail. I wasn't sentenced to torture."

Attorney Jeffrey A. Norkin said Foree's left ovary and fallopian tube ruptured because treatment was delayed by the misdiagnosis.

Foree, who is childless, is probably unable to conceive without medical intervention, he added.

"This verdict acknowledges the significance of Charleen's pain and suffering," Norkin said. "It tells me that the civil justice system will protect inmates, or at least treat inmates as fellow human beings."

Foree, who is 38 and has a history of drug convictions, was sent to the North Broward Jail in Pompano Beach on April 17, 2000, after failing to appear in court to answer a cocaine-possession charge.

Beginning in early May, she suffered abdominal pain so severe she was unable to get out of her bunk. She said she spent the days doubled over and praying for her life.

"I was helpless," she recalled. "A lot of days I couldn't get up. I couldn't roll over. I couldn't move my legs. I thought I'd die."

But, according to court records, she was never seen by a doctor or given a pregnancy test. Jail nurses denied her request to go to the hospital. Instead, she was given Milk of Magnesia and a mild over-the-counter pain reliever. She was told to take deep breaths.

Foree was released May 26 with credit for time served and good behavior and sent to a halfway house. A nurse there told her to tolerate the pain as long as she could. The next day, Foree summoned an ambulance and was taken to Imperial Point Medical Center, where the ectopic pregnancy was immediately diagnosed.

During emergency surgery, doctors discovered her left ovary and fallopian tube had ruptured. They removed a baseball-sized abscess from her abdomen, along with about a pint of congealed blood.

The surgeon, Dr. Kenneth Kassin, concluded that Foree's treatment as the jail demonstrated "total and flagrant disregard for this woman's health."

At the time, Tennessee-based EMSA Correctional Care Inc. was under contract with the Broward County Sheriff's Office to provide medical care in the jails. Dr. Erin Cody was the medical director at the 1,500-inmate North Broward Jail.

The jury ordered EMSA and Cody to pay the damages for negligence and medical malpractice. Their attorneys did not return a telephone call Friday seeking comment.

"They could have settled this case for $75,000," Norkin said. "They never offered a penny until right before the trial, when they offered $55,000. This case should have been settled. It cost the insurance company $600,000 to $700,000."

The Sheriff's Office, which no longer contracts with EMSA, was dropped as a defendant on the eve of trial.

Foree's near-death experience wasn't the end of her stay in Broward County jails, however. She violated her probation by leaving the halfway house, even if it was by ambulance.

When she recovered from surgery, she was sent back to jail to finish the 60-day sentence.

"I'm kind of anxious to get out of Broward, actually," Foree said, heading to the airport to catch a flight to her hometown in Illinois.

She vowed to stay away from cocaine and out of jail.

Ann W. O'Neill can be reached at awoneill@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4531.